Eternal Engine Zone
by Angular Jack
Summary: A mechanical fortress created by Doctor Eggman, filled to the brim with gadgets and clockwork that never stops running. The obstacles you'll face within include the likes of badniks, stage hazards, and everything you've ever feared. The factory of fear is the first and final stage you'll encounter in this adventure, Sonic. You aren't ready, but you don't get a choice.


This fic is not intended for the faint of heart, and is not meant to cater to such. I assume you expect this to not be a lighthearted adventure, considering the rating, and that you would have had to alter your filters to find it. There will be graphic content.

Thank you kindly for taking the time to look at this story. I hope you enjoy what you read...

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**ACT 1**

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A pin dropping in a silent room. This is what the sound of the gentle hiss of a tube unsealing is comparable to. The halls of this place were deathly quiet, and this simple act that was instructed by complicated programs was almost a shockingly loud event in these particular environs.

A hand reached out of the tube, gripping the top of it. With several gasps, the blue-quilled form of a hedgehog emerged. Green eyes blinked open slowly, and took in the surroundings. The hedgehog pulled himself out of the tube, and stood up, stretching.

Sonic the Hedgehog had no idea where he was. Fun times were ahead, surely. "Doesn't look like the Mystic Ruins at all… This reeks of Egghead."

Sonic looked down, to note that he had no shoes on. Well, he would have had to take any off anyways, with all the fluids in that tube…

He looked back at the tube. Filled with a clear fluid, lightly tinted sky-blue. What looked like cords were slowly pulling away from the center, where Sonic had been.

Had Robotnik been keeping him in there? If he had been, why? Why would the Doctor keep him alive for any amount of time? Sonic didn't have the Chaos Emeralds, or anything else conceivably valuable.

Sonic returned to searching the room. There were more tubes like the one he was in, but they were all empty. The room stretched on for a while, completely lined with these tubes. But they were all empty. Every last one. A few of the ones near him seemed to have residual moisture within, but the others were bone dry. The tube he was in, notably, was having the fluid drained from it.

Looking to his left, Sonic found that the tube he had been in was close to a wall. Desks and computers lined this wall. The room was long in terms of going down to make space for more tubes, but was not incredibly wide at all. Just as big as it needed to be, Sonic supposed. This meant that the wall lined with desks did not have many desks to it.

He walked up to a desk covered with papers.

After flipping through papers for a while, he gave up on trying to get information out of them. He hardly understood anything noted. There were continual mentions of replenish-able power supplies, stem cell research, and a pathogen. But whoever was writing those papers was hardly writing it to be legible to anyone else, with how chaotically thoughts were scattered on the paper.

The hedgehog tried to get a computer working, but the screens were all blank. After investigating under the desk, he found that all of the wiring to the computers had been cut.

He stood back up. That made no sense, but whatever. He would figure this out one way or another. Without his shoes, his feet might get sore, but it would be nothing he couldn't handle. He ran in place for a moment, then ran down the length of the room. He returned to the desks shortly.

There was nothing in this room aside from the tubes. An open doorway was to the left of the desks, and that was all he had to work with.

"Alright, time to figure out what's going on here…" He ran in place for a moment once more, then darted into the doorway. "Find out where I am, why I'm here, and who else is here, if anyone else is... Can't be too hard..."

… On leaving the room he was in, he had to stop. And look around.

This place was massive, wherever he was. Metal and machinery was in every direction. Cogs and gears spun without cease, lights flickered in and out of his field of vision constantly. And it was horribly dark. There was enough lighting so he could always see the ground he was standing on and an immediate area around himself, and he could tell that the metals of this place seemed relatively well kept and new. Everything else was not well lit. He could see the machines that seemed to build the foundation and walls, but the further onward he looked, the more and more it looked like the machinations expanded endlessly into an inky black void.

He looked forward, to see a metal walkway he could walk across. Further examination showed that it was the only route available. He seemed to be on some sort of platform or landing.

Sonic began to run across the walkway, and was faced with no resistance. It was much louder now that he was in the midst of the eternally operating cog-works, and it filled him with unease. It was too loud for his liking. It would make it harder to hear a badnik or other robot approach him.

… Sonic slowed down for a moment. The machines were… quieter, now? How? Was he away from the louder ones? That wouldn't make sense. He could still hear the same sounds, but they just sounded… duller. Why was that?

A voice rang in over intercoms before he could ponder it for too long, "I see you've finally woke up, blue rat."

Sonic grinned, looking skyward as he started to pick up the pace again. "So this is your doing, Egghead. I would give you points for catching me, but you sort of wasted the opportunity. I'm still kicking."

"Killing you before now would not have accomplished my goal, hedgehog. Trust me, though. You won't be kicking for much longer."

"Why don't you come down and say that to my face, Doc? I seem to have nothing but running space down here, and nothing to do with it all."

"Ah, you're bored, then? Don't worry, I can fix that for you."

Several metallic clangs could be heard ahead, and Sonic smirked as he ran towards several badniks. They looked like rather basic things. Bulky crabs with large claws.

Effortlessly, Sonic jumped into the air, and after rolling into a ball, struck one of the badniks with a homing attack. A spray of machinery and red signified the robot falling apart. The hedgehog chained his attacks together, and struck at the other two nearby. He landed on the ground, and smirked again. "That all you got, Egghead? I can keep this up all day!" He glanced back at the remains of the robots, ready to make another remark.

And stopped.

His body froze in place. Rigid. His heart almost seemed to stop along with it all.

_Blood._

Amidst all of the wreckage of the robots, there was blood everywhere. Blood, and… Bits of –

Sonic looked away immediately, and looked himself over. He was not injured. Covered in more blood, but not injured…

Where… How…

He looked ahead again, breathing heavily. And saw another robot.

… It wasn't attacking. It wasn't even trying. It just clumsily moved about, trying to move a piece of metal in its claw across the bridge.

Sonic slowly stepped around it, and then started to run on. He looked up, and screamed, "What the hell was that, Eggman!?"

There was no response of any kind.

"Eggman!"

It remained silent.

Sonic cursed inwardly, and kept running. He reached the end of the walkway, which seemed to just careen off into oblivion. With a jump and a well-timed homing attack, he made it across the gap, and entered a tall hallway.

Metal surrounded him on every side now. Machinery from behind the walls droned in his ears. The sounds from before seemed to actually be getting louder now, returning to the original volume. There was still little resistance to be spoken of, aside from more of those crabs mucking about. Sonic avoided them every chance he could.

The hallway become more complex as he moved along, with corners he had to turn becoming more and more frequent. It was getting hard to keep a constant and steady pace whilst navigating and avoiding the crabs.

And soon, he had to stop to take a breather. How long was this hallway? It offered no altering pathways, just a rigid and structured way through.

He started to jog along, not seeing any robots immediately nearby. He turned one more corner, and took a moment to breathe a sigh of relief. He seemed out of the hallway, as the skywards view opened up again. There was still walls to each side. He looked down.

A pit of broken and jagged metal and glass lay before him, seeming to have a layer of rust over it.

"… Darn it, I need to go back."

He didn't have his shoes, there was no way he would try and navigate that. He started to turn…

To see that a door had shut. A rather large door, too. Blocked off the way back into the hallway.

What was he supposed to do now? Trying to run across the pit would be stupid. It would prove fatal to his feet…

He wasn't used to not having a way out. This wasn't right.

He looked to the pit, then looked back again. After that, he looked up.

And paled. A large tank hung nearby in the air, pipes going off of it in every direction. A few pipes went directly over where he was standing, with open spigots.

There was what sounded like the loud whine of many large wheels being spun around, and water started pouring out.

In a panic, Sonic looked away, and bolted across the pit. The water hit the platform he was on, and harmlessly flowed into the pit.

A hedgehog's screams became the factory's chorus for all of a few seconds, then stopped. The run was over quickly, but the pain was there to stay with him.

Sonic had stopped at the other end, laying down. He dared a glance down. And cringed. His feet were hardly recognizable anymore as extremities of his body. Just mangled messes of blood and flesh.

Tears rolled down his cheeks, but he could no longer make any sounds. He laid his head back.

… A few minutes later, one of the crabs found its way over to Sonic. One weird, googly eye looked down at him.

He stared at it blankly.

With a simple, swift motion, it brought its claw down on his head, crushing his skull.

LIVES LEFT: 2

With a metallic hiss, a small hatch opened up. With a scream, a blue hedgehog pulled himself out, and scrambled onto the ground, curling up into a ball instantly.

"My feet… my feet… my feet…"

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Reviews are always appreciated, as many will tell you.

This fic was, honestly, inspired mainly by music. Some bits and parts of the 3D Blast soundtrack, as well as some wondrous pieces by Two Steps From Hell.

... Not sure how it caused this, but hey. I'm game.

Update 2/22/2015: Edited bits and parts of the text, to try and eliminate some redundant terminology that was use. Replaced the "RESTART" with a different phrase, as the idea for how this fic would play out has changed.

Next update will not be Act 2, but see you next update regardless.


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